"You don't have to earn your peace "
I woke up with the kind of certainty that did not belong to reason. It was not a slow drift from dream to waking; it was an instant, a single breath that told me I am awake. The room was still steeped in darkness. The fire in the hearth had burned low, the faint red of dying embers breathing just enough warmth into the air to keep it alive. The curtains were drawn tight against the dawn, leaving only the smallest thread of light where fabric met stone.
